I donno if you have me beat :P I have the same well-related traits as you, except Focused Rituals and the free Well of Blood on revive (which has not been useful in tournament PvP matches).

I tried Focused Rituals actually, but I found it worked better for my design to not take it. I use my wells defensively more than offensively, so I actually want them centered on me more often than not. The life siphon trait is worth it on so many levels.

My build is geared strictly for PvP, though. In PvE my necro is only level 15 and I have no idea how I want to build him for PvE. This character plays PvP with defense and sustainability in mind, not attacking. In PvE I will probably build more offensively.

It's not that they're a bad class. It's that the class forces you into one type of gameplay to be effective: The Condition Master. Swapping, sapping, and tossing conditions is a cool concept, but not everybody wants to play that type of character. Unfortunately, minions are weak, and life-drain spec doesn't come online until about level 30 (and then you're still only really OK at solo PvE).

Pumping my Power stat and killing things by draining their life force and adding it to my own should be a legitimate playstyle. Raising armies of undead to fight for me so that I don't have to get my hands dirty should be a legitimate playstyle.

But every weapon combination forces some sort of long-cooldown aoe condition-inducing effects on your build. No matter what weapon choices you make, you'll always end up sacrificing pure damage for a crappy bleed or a short-duration poison. There are no weapon choices that allow you to create minions from the enemies you kill. There's only a single life-drain weapon skill on any weapon, and it's a single-target channeled ability on the dagger with a 600 range, for christ sake.

I'm not saying that you can't build a necromancer however you want and still get some sort of enjoyment out of it. I'm simply saying that there's one clear "best" build for this class, and I don't want to feel like I'm intentionally gimping myself, just so I can be my own special snowflake.

You can also spec into death shroud being your primary ability and everything else just building life force. Life Blast already deals good damage and transfers a condition from you to your target. When it pierces, causes vulnerability, and gives you might every time you attack, you quickly do a significant amount of damage. Also, while you're using it, you're not taking hit point damage.

You also have to realize that each profession has a general play-style that they are geared toward. Necros are kings of attrition wars, and they have the tools to force it.

They also ignore a lot of the normal defenses. They have very few "dodge this or die" skills, but at the same time, they have no big tells either. Only four of their skills have a projectile (two of which are death shroud, one other which pierces and is a basic attack), so body-blocking is not viable against them. They specialize in dealing lots of damage through numerous little hits, so Aegis and Blind are really not effective at stopping their damage. Conditions are not affected by armor or Toughness. Poison is fairly easy for them to inflict and is the biggest counter to healing.

The exclusion of life steal is somewhat deliberate. Life Force/Death Shroud is really the type of mechanic you want to go for if you want to play the "vampiric beater" role. Your Life Force bar replaces your health bar when you go into Death Shroud, so it functions as an optional life steal.

I don't know about minion masters. I am not fond of the way minions work in general, so I don't know how potentially viable they are. I do know facing off against minion masters in tournament PvP is very annoying sometimes.

It IS possible to build an effective defensive/support necro but I really don't know how far that'll get you soloing.

Conditions are a big part of many offensive builds, though. My Engineer build has a lot of stacking burning, bleeding, and vulnerability (and weakness if I'm using Elixir Gun). I haven't experimented much with direct offensive necro (yet; it's on my list of things to try) so I can't advise there.

The exclusion of life steal is somewhat deliberate. Life Force/Death Shroud is really the type of mechanic you want to go for if you want to play the "vampiric beater" role. Your Life Force bar replaces your health bar when you go into Death Shroud, so it functions as an optional life steal.

The issue with this is that you're gimped any time your DS is offline. Speccing deep for death shroud makes it a nice little power house as long as it's up and running, but once it's down, half your trait points are worthless. And since your life force reduces on its own, even when you're not taking damage, you're only going to be able to sit in it for 10 seconds or so at a time.

And it's never going to quite be the same as a straight life drain build. The Dagger 2 skill and one active signet ability are the only life drain available for the class... just enough to hint at what could have been, without actually being useful.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kaitou Kage

I don't know about minion masters. I am not fond of the way minions work in general, so I don't know how potentially viable they are. I do know facing off against minion masters in tournament PvP is very annoying sometimes.

The problem with minions is that they require a deep trait investment to even become worth casting. They're basically worthless for the first 30 levels. And even after you've gone deep enough into your trait tree to make them not explode when somebody looks at them funny, you still have to deal with the garbage of having them not heal between battles. While every other class can wait a few seconds for their health to regen between one combat and the next, the minion master necro has to blow up all his minions that are on the verge of death, then wait 20+ seconds for his skill(s) to reset so he can call them up again.